A gateway to discovering and tracking the descendants of the original New Netherland Brouwer progenitors, namely Adam Brouwer of Gowanus, Jan (or Johannes) Brouwer of Flatlands and Willem Brouwer of Beverwijck (Albany). As well as some diversions covering other Brewer and Brower families with origins in Colonial America

Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) made the announcement with an e-mail to its customers. If you have taken a Y-DNA test with Family Tree in the past, and have a current account with FTDNA then you should have received this e-mail. Those who have taken the Y-DNA test can view their placement on the new Y-DNA Tree by logging into their account, selecting the Y-DNA tab, and then selecting the "Haplotree and SNPs" option. You will then be taken to a new page that has significantly more detail then the old Haplotree and SNPs page. You may also see that the letter-numeric designation (used to label SNPs) that is used to identify your haplogroup (or predicted haplogroup) has changed. For example, those who are genetic descendants of Adam Brouwer of Gowanus, L. I., were, up until April 25th, designated as belonging to haplogroup E-M35.1. You will now see that you are categorized as belonging to haplogroup E-L117. Genetic descendants of Jan Brouwer of Flatlands, on the other hand, are still categorized as belonging to haplogroup I-M223, or I-P78, depending on the level of SNP testing that each of you have done (I-P78 is a sub-group of I-M223).

What does this change in designation mean for genetic descendants of Adam Brouwer? In the context of using Y-DNA testing (genetic genealogy) as an aid in determining whether or not you are a descendant of Adam Brouwer, and in determining which other Adam Brouwer descendants you are more closely related to, it means nothing. Think of it along the lines of "a rose by any other name is still a rose." All that has changed here is the name. Your relationship to others in the Adam Brouwer Group has not been changed.

I am not an expert, and I certainly was not among those making the decisions on how to reorganize and relabel the Y-DNA tree, but it appears to me, that what happened with regards to the labeling of haplogroup E-M35, is that a new SNP was found and was given the designation E-L117. The two, E-M35 and E-L117, are on the same "level" so to speak. In other words, E-L117 is not a sub-group of E-M35. They are different SNPs but neither appears to be further along the Y-DNA Tree than the other. But now, E-L117 has been chosen as the SNP to identify this haplogroup.

What has changed is that many more SNPs have been identified by the Genographic Project. In their news release they state that the number of branches in the Y-DNA Tree has grown from 667 to 1200. When you look at your new Haplotree and SNP page, you will see that "downstream" of your own haplogroup there are many new SNPs that have been identified and tests are available for them. You will also notice that when you go to your Haplotree and SNP page, FTDNA will recommend which SNP or SNPs you might test for in order to refine your haplogroup. For those in the Adam Brouwer group they are recommending a test for the SNPs labeled E-M78 and E-L142. The cost for the two tests is normally $78, but FTDNA is running a sale and the current sale price is $62.40 for the two (I'm not certain as to how long this sale will last). While testing for either, or both, of these two SNPs will refine your place on the Y-DNA Tree, there is no guarantee that the tests would shed any new light on genetic relationships within the Adam Brouwer Group. Perhaps if every member in the Group took the tests, it might, but even then it may be that all of the members will have the same result. It may be that any distinguishing SNP, within the Adam Brouwer Group, is further down the line. In other words, even further testing would be needed.

As a side note, FTDNA is also having a sale on the basic Y-DNA 37 marker test for new members. The sale price is $135.20, compared to the regular price of $169. If you are a male descendant of one of the many Brouwer, Brower, Brewer and Bruer families found worldwide, and have not yet included genetic genealogy in your family history research, now might be an advantageous time to join. Should you chose to join, please do so by going to the Brewer DNA Project webpage and selecting the Join Request tab to order your kit.

Update as of 4:30pm: Before ordering any new single SNP tests, please read the comment by Richard Brewer, Administrator of the Brewer DNA Project, below (just click on "comment"). And here is a link to the report mentioned by Richard Brewer in the comment, "The new 2014 Y-DNA haplotree has arrived."

1 comment:

A word of CAUTION. The introduction of the new Y-DNA Tree was a huge undertaking based on a dataset of 50,000 GENO 2.0 results, but does not yet incorporate the Y-DNA SNPs found in the recent results produced by the FTDNA BIG Y tests nor the release of Chromo 2. Even some of the SNP testing done at FTDNA was not taken into account. The cut off for the new tree was set at November 2013 and much has been learned even in the short time since then. As might be expected, with such a new product, there have been significant errors made in calling the branches and terminal SNPs; many have been misplaced and will need correction. The next revision of the tree will be this year, perhaps as early as June. So, errors are rapidly being picked up as the tree undergoes wider scrutiny by knowledgeable users and hopefully FTDNA will be able to rapidly make the necessary corrections. Many of the FTDNA recommended SNPs are inappropriate and, for one thing, will become unnecessary when the latest SNP information is incorporated. Until then, customers should sit tight and definitely not spend their money purchasing any of the recommended SNPs in an attempt to extend their branches. In spite of the lowered sales price things are still in too much of a state of flux and FTDNA should really not have recommended SNPs for customers to test yet.

On the other hand, the new tree is an improvement over the older out of date 2010 version, which was not updated often enough to be of use. FTDNA has committed to updating the tree at least yearly and this is a good thing.

To compliment, and supplement the information provided by Chris in this blog, I suggest that you read the report on the tree published by Debbie Kennett that provides information released by FTDNA management during the Webinar session in which they introduced the release of this 2014 tree. You can read about it here http://cruwys.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/the-new-2014-y-dna-haplotree-has-arrived.html

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